The Beale/Fowler family
The Beale/Fowler family was the original first family in the long-running UK soap opera, EastEnders. Albert Square's original first family The Beales and Fowlers were the original leading family of Albert Square, having lived there since after World War II. Albert Beale and his wife, Louise had rented the house at 45 Albert Square in the London borough of Walford from the Walford Council. Before they were married, however, they had a daughter born out of wedlock and given up for adoption. The woman would become adopted by an Irish couple Lou knew and she would become Maggie. Maggie would marry a loutish man named Sean Flaherty and have four sons, Eamonn, Conor; John and Tommy. She had three grandsons, Eamonn, Jr; Declan and Carl; and three granddaughters, Colette; Kylie and Mary. Maggie would finally meet her youngest sister, Pauline and the rest of her family in the late 1990s, when they would make a visit to where she lived in Killmoneen, Ireland. For a time, Conor and Mary would live in London. She had six more children after Maggie; Ronnie, Harry, Dora, Kenny and fraternal twins, Pete and Pauline. Lou would die in 1988 in her sleep of a heart condition. Albert's father had opened up the Fruit and vegetable stall in Walford's open-air street market and it has been always run by the family. Albert would take over after his father died. That tradition still remains to this very day. Pete would marry a loose woman named Pat Harris (Pam St. Clement) and, it was thought, that they had a son named Simon (however, it was proven that wasn't the case) but they did have an older son named David (David would be adopted by Pat's second husband, Brian Wicks, which is why his name is David Wicks). After their marriage sundered, due to many things, including Pat's loose ways, Pete would later marry a woman named Kathy Hills and with her, had a son named Ian. Many years before their marriage, a fourteen year old Kathy had been raped and she had a child named Donna Ludlow. Donna would come to the square and would cause maximum distress for all and sundry, alienating everyone on the square, including her mother, until she died of a raging heroin overdose at Dot Branning's home. After all that, Kathy would be later raped by a cad named James Willmot-Brown (William Boyde). This would spell the end of her marriage to Pete. She would later marry Phil Mitchell and she would give birth to his son, Ben. They would divorce, and Pete would drift around at the stall, until he met a woman named Rose Chapman. They fell in love and things were great...with only one hitch. Rose had been married to a mobster who was serving a lengthy prison term, and his crime family didn't much approve of her being with Pete. Pete and Rose would both die in a car accident engineered by the Chapmans in retaliation. Meanwhile, Pete's twin, Pauline would meet a man named Arthur Fowler, a rather loutish character who was unable to hold down a job for any set amount of time. He proposed marriage to her as she had the flu (which caused her to miss being a bridesmaid at Dora's wedding) and he wanted to cheer her up. They would be married for 31 years, and would have three children together. Oldest son, Mark (David Scarboro, Todd Carty) was born first, then their daughter, Michelle was born a few years later. When the series began in 1985, the family lived in 45 Albert Square in Walford. Lou was head of the house, the family, and, in a sense, the Square; and Pauline and Arthur lived with her, along with her two grandchildren. Pete lived nearby with Kathy and Ian. Pauline and Michelle were both pregnant with surprise babies as the series began. Pauline and Arthur had their third child, a son named Martin while Michelle would give birth to her first-born; a daughter named Vicki. Vicki's father was later revealed to be the odious Den Watts (Leslie Grantham), the long-time landlord of the nearby Queen Vic pub (the local pub in the Square, across the way from 45) and the adopted father of her mother's best friend, Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean). Den was a continuous womanizer who was unhappily married to Angie Watts, nee Angie Shaw (Anita Dobson); the pub's landlady, and also had a side woman named Jan Hammond (Jane How) that he was continually ignoring Angie for. After he finally divorced Angie in 1986 (at Christmas, which began the tradition of explosive stories at the time of the Holiday season), he installed Jan behind the bar, but he would send her away later on, after he discovered she was TOO posh for him! Against his judgment, he rehired Angie as a business partner. The revelation of his being Vicki's father, would make Dirty Den persona non grata at Chez Fowler! Pauline would slap him in the face, Arthur would rage (impotently, as it turned out he wasn't good at handling stress like that); and he would be issued a grave threat by the queen bee of the family, Lou. After Den threw Angie and Sharon out, they stayed with Kathy and her family, until Angie moved to Spain, and then to the US, where she would eventually die of cirrhosis of the liver. She would be buried in Walford, next to Den. Some years later, though, Michelle would give birth to another child. This time it was a son, whom she named Mark Jr. (Ned Porteus), with her arch-enemy, Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp), who was, ironically, married to Sharon! After a screaming row between the two of them (who never liked one another), they would have sex, and Mark Jr. was conceived. Mark, Mark Jr.'s namesake, would be a very foolish young man when the show begin, running around with the completely evil Nick Cotton (John Altman). Nick was the son of Pauline's friend and colleague Dot Cotton, with whom she worked at the local launderette; and her rarely seen husband, Charlie Cotton. Charlie would later be revealed to be a womanizer, a bigamist and an all-around sleaze, who would die in a lorry accident. He would try to get Mark involved in all sorts of horrible Right-Wing politics and petty crime, (at one time, Nick tried to mug pensioner Ethel Skinner but she kneed the villain in the groin!) but Nick himself was far WORSE. He was a drug addict, always strung out on heroin and was also a murderer, having killed many people over the years, including Reg Cox and Eddie Royle. One instance, when Nick supplied his younger brother Martin with drugs, finally made Mark realize that he really hated Nick and what he stood for. He would furiously spike Nick's drink and he would push him off the nearby viaduct, temporarily crippling him. A furious Nick would vow revenge, using his own son, Ashley to exact it. Ashley was driving Mark's motor bike (which Nick cut the brake lines to) and he crashed into the launderette window, killing him. This angered Dot to the point where she threw Nick out of her house and out of her life. After more years of trouble, always fueled by his greed and his raging drug habit, he would finally die of a heroin overdose (of which he would not be mourned by anyone not even his mother...they were all too glad to see him finally go!). In a tip of the hat to the way the show opened in February 1985, Kush Kazemi; Mark's brother, Martin, Kush's best friend; and his second wife, Stacey Slater would find Nick dead, fittingly, in the same flat in which he murdered the former resident, Reg Cox, all those years ago. Mark would soon have to deal with his own issues, when he would contract HIV from his first wife, Gill. She would die after being married to him only one day. He would marry two other women, Ruth Fowler, who would leave him for his cousin, Connor Flaherty; and then, market inspector, Lisa Shaw, who was also involved with scheming Phil Mitchell and was carrying the former's child, who would later become Louise Mitchell. Louise, named after the late Lou (due to Lisa being married to Mark, who was legally Louise's father, for a time), would become best friends with his niece, Bex. Michelle would have her share of romantic disasters, marrying a man she didn't really love, a man named Lofty Holloway. She would abort the child she was carrying with him (she had a very bad propensity to fall for unavailable men), and the marriage would sunder. After more disastrous relationships, she would move to America and raise Vicki, eventually marrying a man named Tim who would become the father figure to her two children. Martin would grow up into quite a tearaway, especially after the death of his father from an injury he gained in prison. Martin would get involved with a lot of burglaries and would have more than his share of time in jail. He would soon become enamored of Sonia Jackson (Natalie Cassidy), who was interested in Mitchell relative Jamie. However, they would sleep together in a drunken state. Martin was now considered to be the head of the Fowler branch of the family. Sonia would give birth to Martin's first child, Chloe, who would later be known as Rebecca. She and Martin would marry and would raise Rebecca. However, off-screen, the marriage would sunder and they would divorce. Bex, now in her 12th level at Secondary school, is currently living in Walford and is now considered to be the glue that holds the Fowler family together. Ian, a rather charmless character, was an entrepreneur who was not too well-liked from people, because of his tactics and had once been a loan shark. He has been married four times and had four children. Of his children, Peter and Bobby are the only ones living. Bobby is living away from Walford; Lucy would be murdered by Bobby and Steven (his father was Simon Wicks) would die of a heart condition. The other child by his former wife, Cindy, also named Cindy, would also live with him for a time. Kathy, Ian's mother, would remarry the foul Phil Mitchell and would give birth to his half-brother, Ben Mitchell. Ben would leave Walford some years later. Kathy would later marry vicious Gavin Sullivan, and he would meet his inevitable end. It was later revealed that Gavin was Sharon Mitchell's real father, making Ian and Sharon half-siblings! Despite his often diabolical behavior, Ian has a clear devotion to his family. He is very much a part of the neighborhood, and he is also devoted to Martin and the others. Martin would return to his birth home after his marriage to Sonia ended, and is currently married to Stacey. He currently owns the family's Fruit and Veggie stall on the market. He is also the father or stepfather to her three younger children. Lily Fowler (whom he adopted as his stepdaughter, her birth father was Ryan Malloy); Arthur Brian Fowler (named after his late father and Stacey's late father, his birth father was Martin's best mate, Kush Kazemi) and Hope (the couple's blood child). Despite their marriage ending, Martin and Sonia are good friends and they are excellent co-parents to Bex. Stacey has also taken to Bex, giving her much needed love and support. Although Martin and Stacey were temporarily sundered after the latter had an affair with her former father in law, Max Branning (he would throw her out of the house, and she would change the locks on him in retaliation), the two would eventually reunite. They are currently quite happy. Bex currently lives with her mother, Sonia and her uncle Robbie. However, she and Martin would often spend time with one another, and she still has a wonderful bond with her half-siblings. All the travails she had, bullying, a goth period, plus dealing with Louise, had only served to make Bex even stronger. Of this once-powerful family, Ian, Martin, Kathy, Sharon (in a sense, she is a Beale, due to her being Ian's stepsister) and Bex are the current members still around, and they are well on the way to making the Fowler/Beale names a formidable force in Walford once again. Category:EastEnders characters